


Saruman the Grey

by AbeClabby



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 20:16:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11320908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbeClabby/pseuds/AbeClabby
Summary: The White Wizard Saruman was a guardian of Middle-Earth for thousands of years.  He was cunning, wise, and a keeper of the history of the world.  But for all this, he did not get to truly shape the world.  He was only an eye.  So when the eye gazed back at him, it saw in his heart his desire to make history, to raise something truly worth writing about.  He saw his love of magic, and his yearning to make use of it.  And he gave him a chance.





	Saruman the Grey

SARUMAN THE GREY

 

The White Wizard had come so far. It seemed so unjust, now that it was his time to go.

He was made for this world to prevent the rise of Sauron; all his life he had studied the ways of the Enemy. He and the Council, these divine sparks, were as stars above the fireflies that studded the Earth. They were there, not to rule them, but to guide them, so that they might do right by themselves. 

They called him Saruman the Wise; his name meant Man of Skill. The peoples looked to him as children do to a craftsman, a performer, one who can do what they cannot imagine to. His tools, and his counsel, each were treasured and clutched close to their hearts. They only wished they could hold him closer, so that they might share his wonders. But his secrets were not for them to understand. He kept them at bay enough that he might have his peace.

Yet his mind was far stronger than his heart. He could craft words and means around any wall in Middle-Earth, and all were proud of him for it. It made him proud himself. So as he courted the Dark Power, he who had never met his equal did not think to fear it. When he gazed into the void in his seeing-stone, the void had looked back, saw his heart, and made it a promise.

The great Power in the East had awakened. It promised to flood the Earth with its armies and its sorcery and its mythical beasts. So much change could have come over the sleeping woods of the world. Saruman had watched it all grow slow and weak. The old guards drew rust over their ruins of stone, and their farmers pawed at the soil like dogs for its grains and its fruits. Saruman the Wise had watched and written down the history of the world for two thousand years; there had been no moment worth writing since the battle with Smaug. The only things worth scribing was change - and he knew he could write history. He was a wizard, after all. No one but the elves had known the world like he did.

And so, the wizard set to work. From Isengard’s tower of Orthanc, he poured over its scrolls and delved into its tomes. He turned his ear to the Eye. Sauron was once the disciple of Morgoth, the first of the Gods to challenge the maker, the first to shape life in his image. Saruman would do it again. He sculpted his people, with the maws of Orcs and the spines of Men. He bred them to be better than their progenitors. No orcs or men were as strong or as fierce as his Uruk-Hai! Life on this plain, old Earth had made nothing this mighty.

He had looked down from his tower at his ten thousand soldiers, and almost pained to send them away. He was no more a scholar, no servant to pass on other’s deeds; he was a king. 

But that year he watched magic die. A wizard snuffed the Shadow's Flame, a woman killed the King of Wraiths, and a halfling felled the God of Greed. Even the Elves left Middle-Earth, and the once-Grey Wizard with them. 

And yet as his glory was broken like water upon rock, his disbelief shook him. How? How could flesh outdo magic? How could stone undo fire? Mere men were just pieces that moved. They had no dark winds, no pacts beyond death. They could not carve life out of the muck and tell it to rise up and fight. Yes, the trees had their shepherds, and a legion of spirits did take up arms - but these were relics, barely good for one last use. And now they too were spent. Even his old friend, the Grey Wizard, had taken this path - a flash of brilliance, a rise from the dead, and for all his wonders, he still chose to go.

He had gripped his staff nearly in two, as the Age of Men crumbled the last of his work. He was watcing magic die.

So of course he wanted a second chance, when he spoke with Theoden, and he asked him for peace. He was one of the last - one of the last legenday things left in the world. It needed him. But the king spoke with the short-sightedness of mortals, blaming him for the deaths of his men. Men would be followed by other men. History would not know their names. He knew nothing of death. So Saruman, brought so low by one so lowly a being, struck at him with his silver tongue. He reminded him of his mortality, as much to shake him as to reassure himself that this man, too, would pass. 

And yet for this, Gandalf reached out and broke his staff. He had nothing left to hold onto. What worth were his scrolls in the world run by the flesh? Knowledge held no power anymore. All he knew was what was, but now, none of it was his. 

With his old allies turned enemies, and and his new allies turned to dust, he reached out to the peoples who had wronged him most. A mere four of them had marshalled the Ents and destroyed the greatest power in the world. But he knew how to seek out a traitor. There was a Hobbit, a Lotho Sackville-Baggins, heir to the Ring-Bearer’s home and his fortune. In such a gentle corner of the world, it only took some laundered money and a few of his men to prop the Hobbit up as mayor of the Shire. 

And once again, the Wizard whispered in a ruler’s ear. Lotho started to build this farmer’s town, making it strong. He put down metals and fed them fires. He would make it industrious, and make these little men work their way into history. He would have some people of the work to make in his image. He had given so much to the world. It owed him.

Yet - yet another “yet” ensnared his chapter in the book. It was a chapter he would not be there to write. The Middle-Earth heroes came proudly home. The spirit of battle came with them. Impossibly, they were all it took to lead these meekest of people into their first, and only, coup. The White Wizard had been reduced to this. Not even the smallest of peoples felt themselves smaller than him.

He knew the gentleness of the Ringbearer. He knew the forever-boy would banish him rather than keep him for punishment. One last retreat then, he thought. One more chance to find something to call his own.

He could stoop no lower. It is no wonder, then, that he was killed by a worm. On the front steps of Bag End, Grima, Wormtongue, his loyal traitor, cut down the oldest being in the world. He had no gratitude, not from having been an accomplice in the greatest of Wars, nor for getting to be the puppeteer of a king, nor for witnessing history from the highest of towers. He had no reverence, for the most powerful Wizard ever to touch the earth, for the history, for the power, for the wisdom. For the wisest of Wizards, it was beyond him what would possess him to kill him. Perhaps this was his chance to feel powerful. He could take power from the world, then, but he could not have it.

And neither could the Wizard.

The Return of the King:  
"To the dismay of those that stood by, about the body of Saruman a grey mist gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a pale shrouded figure it loomed over the Hill. For a moment it wavered, looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a sigh dissolved into nothing.

Gandalf:  
"“… his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again. For he will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in his beginning, and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble, and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape.”"


End file.
